


Apology Girl

by oursolemnhour49



Series: Those We Pass On By [1]
Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Character Study, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, POV Female Character, POV Minor Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 18:14:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/852542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oursolemnhour49/pseuds/oursolemnhour49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has to say sorry to someone. She's never been good at that. Not even when she needs to say it. Especially when she needs to say it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apology Girl

**Author's Note:**

> I've been in a horrible bout of writer's block, and to break it I've been working on various character studies, all of them to do with minor characters. Some are still in progress, all are one-shots, and are going to be part of a series. This is the first one I finished that I just tore through. Honestly, I like it, so here it is. 
> 
> Jane in Breaking Bad has always fascinated me, and on a rewatch, I feel so terrible for her. This poor girl was screwed from the minute she met Jesse, and in any other universe, they probably would have been perfect for each other. In the messed-up world they're in, though, they just got caught up in the grinders, and she got caught bad.  
> This is just a brief look at her, in an unseen moment. I wish she could have been around longer.

It’s not fair, and she knows it, but all she can think when it comes to her and Jesse’s fight is “Not ready.”

She’s not ready to talk about this. How the thought of her dad still causes a dull ache in the pit of her stomach, coupled with the unwelcome wish that none of the shouts and slammed doors had happened. 

Ever since she started sleeping with Jesse, she’s told herself that it means nothing. They’re helping each other with natural carnal needs, and there’s nothing more to it than carnal needs.

God, it sounds stupid even when she’s just thinking it. 

She curls up in the window. A few faint lines dash across the page here and there, but nothing’s coming to her. Normally she can calm down when she’s drawing, even if it’s just a few abstract shapes or a sketch of the street in front of her.

Nothing’s coming. Her pencil’s motionless.

Her eyes start to sting a little, but she is damned if she is going to start crying over a pothead who sells- and who smiles at her like she’s the fucking sunrise when she walks in and who tries to make her breakfast just because that’s something he wanted to do for her. She is not going to cry over the fact that he and her hardass dad- who has always wanted the best for her, who always tried to make her life easier after her mom died- will never be able to fit together. They will never be able to understand that they both could mean something to her. 

Her dad and Jesse can’t work together. They never will. That simple.

So when Jesse stumbled out this morning- looking surprisingly presentable, if she’s being honest- with her dad at the door, the only thing on her mind was that this this is going to be like bringing two north points of a magnet together, and so she rebuffed Jesse when he tried to introduce himself. Fiercely, defensively.

She can’t tell if it was just embarrassment and shame that her boyfriend is such a lowlife. But her anguish seems to run deeper than that. It’s the fact that no matter what she tries, no matter what she does, things won’t be able to go on the way they are. And she can’t face that. This arrangement with Jesse is an unsteady equilibrium, one that occasionally wobbles, but so far nothing’s been upset. 

She knows she can’t keep things that way. She wants nothing more than for things to stay that way. 

So she acted like she didn’t know Jesse. Because with her dad standing at the door, she’s his daughter. And as her dad’s daughter, she can’t be Jesse’s girlfriend. 

The pencil touches the paper again. Another swift moving stroke. It could be the billow of the cape, and now a tear does escape. Fuck. She sets the paper down, because she never throws a sketch away, not ever, and she sort of likes the look of that line. A cape. A superhero’s cape. 

Kanga Man. God, Kanga Man. 

Her father’s daughter? Jesse’s girlfriend?

Who is she, Jane Margolis?

The obvious answer- the answer every person with their life together would tell her- is whoever she wants to be. But it’s never that simple, is it? Because who she wants to be is both, each, all, neither. She wants to be a person who could get high without her dad breathing down her neck. She wants to be a girl who could make people say to her dad “You’re so lucky to have her.” She wants to see that “here comes the sun” smile on Jesse’s face when she walks into a room. She wants to do something, anything, right. Just to prove to everyone- to herself- that she can. 

So what’s right here? Is it her dad, the one who’s made her life a total fucking misery out of pure, aching love for her? Is it Jesse, who tries so hard to make her happy for the same reason, even though his efforts are just going to screw her life up even more? 

Which deserves more misery? The dad who’s always given up on her only to come back to try again and again? The boyfriend whose love for shines out so transparently that it wouldn’t matter if he was a mute, that it doesn’t matter that he wouldn’t know good vocabulary if it hit him in the face?

She’s hurt them both. She owes them both an apology. So who can she face apologizing to? Which one deserves it? Which one can she say sorry to without hating herself even more than she does?

How about her, then? Does anyone owe her an apology? How much of her messed-up life is her fault? Would any of it changed if someone had changed something? If she’d gone home like she should have instead of staying after school with Cassie Crowley back when she was a sophomore, would that have changed things? The day with Cassie was when the drugs began, no question about that, but what about her father? They’d been fighting for how long at that point? A few months? A few years? It had been stupid teenage stuff, and somewhere along the line it had grown bitter, angry, hateful. He’d begun shouting at her, rolling his eyes, asking her why she couldn’t be normal. Had that been it?

Did it matter? 

Who could apologize for that messup? Who was supposed to? Was it her, maybe not realizing when her dad was depressed while she gave him stupid teenage attitude? Was it him, for not understanding how bad it hurt her when he acted like she was a constant disappointment? 

No amount of apologies could fix what had gone wrong between her and her dad. 

But an apology might be able to fix what happened between her and Jesse. 

She looks at the swirl again. It could definitely be a cape.


End file.
